A month after former President Trump left office in 2021, Matt Pottinger, who had been the point man for China on Trump's National Security Council, told me in an interview that if Trump had remained in office for a second mandate, could have moved to a “full decoupling” of the US economy from China.
However, John Bolton, who was Trump's third national security adviser, predicted in early 2021 that if Trump had been re-elected, “he could have returned to the bromance and a disastrous trade deal.” [with China]Just to start”.
Those contradictory statements point to Trump's unpredictability regarding China. They also raise the question of how Chinese President Xi Jinping and his advisers view the 2024 US election and the possibility of another Trump presidency.
A false logic has taken hold in this country. Trump talks tough about China and promises a wave of new import tariffs. Therefore, the thinking goes, China must not want Trump to return to the White House; Xi would be in favor of President Biden's re-election.
That conclusion is wrong. China is not only not worried about the prospect of a second Trump presidency, but would prefer it to a continuation of Biden and the Democrats.
First, Trump is precisely the kind of leader China knows how to deal with. He has a huge ego and believes that only he can solve problems through agreements that he believes only he can make. Remember: Trump believed that only he could get North Korea to curb its nuclear weapons program by meeting with its leader, Kim Jong Un. His clumsy efforts to compromise led to a lot of drama and no results.
China has a history of dealing with powerful officials through flattery, personal relationships and financial rewards. Chinese leaders prefer such officials to those who are concerned with impersonal rules or laws.
During the Trump presidency, we saw China pull these levers. With the help of real estate deals and brand concessions, the Chinese forged connections with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Chinese officials also spent millions of dollars in Trump's hotel properties. Those efforts would no doubt be revived in a second Trump presidency.
Trump supporters will point out that Biden's son Hunter has also done business with China, trading on his father's name and power. But Hunter's business interests were puny compared to those of Trump Inc., and no one has found convincing evidence that Joe Biden profited from his family's overseas businesses.
Beyond the appeal of Trump's egomania, Beijing would see his foreign policy goals as a vast improvement over Biden's.
China's main geopolitical concern these days is derailing the series of alliances and partnerships that the Biden administration has created in response to its policies. The president has strengthened US ties with Japan, South Korea and Australia; announced new US bases in the Philippines; increased bilateral cooperation with Vietnam; and enlisted European nations to help counter China on trade, technology and sanctions.
Trump, on the other hand, was contemptuous of American alliances during his first term, and has been even more so in his recent campaign statements, questioning America's obligations to NATO, supporting an end to aid to Ukraine, and offering words of reassurance. praise authoritarian leaders like Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, who was at Mar-a-Lago on Friday.
Most importantly, Trump promises a new, warmer relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with with whom China forged a “limitless” partnership in 2022. If Trump is re-elected, he could even lift sanctions against Russia.
From China's perspective, the ideal would be for the United States to break away from its allies and move closer to Russia. A United States retreating from the world stage offers ample space for China to project its international ambitions.
Finally, China understands that it is a Democratic and not a Republican administration that is likely to act tough rather than simply talk tough.
It is true that while Trump was in the White House, the United States moved away from a policy of compromise and began to treat China as the geopolitical and commercial adversary it had become. But that could well have happened under any president, given the underlying factors: China's aggressive actions abroad and the American business community's growing dissatisfaction with China's commercial espionage and intellectual property theft.
Trump was willing to impose tariffs on China, although his predecessors were not. But Biden not only continued those tariffs, he imposed new restrictions on technology trade that went far beyond anything Trump has done to challenge the Chinese; In particular, he imposed limits in 2022 that he tightened a year later on China's access to semiconductors and chip-making equipment. Such efforts are likely to continue if Democrats keep the White House.
And there's this: Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods were groundbreaking, but less remembered is that he also signed a trade deal with China (“It doesn't get any bigger than this,” he boasted) that proved unsuccessful. In exchange for modest cuts to the tariffs Trump had imposed, China pledged to buy $200 million in American exports. The Chinese never came close to keeping that promise.
Based on his record, it seems fair to predict that if Trump were to return to the White House, he would begin bombastic rhetoric against China. Then, with an emphasis on personalized diplomacy, he could look for another business deal that he could promote, regardless of the actual results of it.
Trump's promises to weaken America's relations with its allies, his self-centered approach to diplomacy, and his propensity to overdo and underdeliver would only make it easier for Beijing to realize its global ambitions.
China is not afraid of Trump. Celebrate the prospect of his return to the presidency.
James Mann, author of three books on the United States' relationship with China, is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
